Shiv Sena helped Congress in Sangli elections, says NCP

A tacit understanding between the Shiv Sena and Congress, helped the latter win the Sangli civic polls, the Nationalist Congress Party alleged on Tuesday.

Despite all its efforts, the NCP was restricted to 18 of the 78 seats in the Sangli-MirajKupwad Corporation, while the Congress won 40 seats.

The NCP claimed that all other parties had ganged up against them.

The party’s state unit chief Bhaskar Jadhav said that though the Shiv Sena had won only 0.70% of the total votes, it helped the Congress.

Jadhav said the percentage of votes polled for the party has remained constant.

“The vote share of the Vikas Mahaaghadi, the alliance of parties including the NCP and BJP, was 40.80% in the 2008 election.

This time, we got 1.53 lakh votes, almost 30% of total votes. This shows that the percentage was sizable, even as the number of seats dipped. We have successfully retained the mandate of the people,” he said.

Jadhav admitted that the tiff between the Congress and the NCP on the evening of the election was uncalled for.

“The Opposition has no reason to dream that we will continue fighting even in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections next year.

What happened was unfortunate and we will learn lessons from it,” he said.